


there's nothing in this world i wouldn't do

by mayfriend



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet Ending, Brotherhood, Codependency, Episode: s01e08 The Burial, Episode: s01e09 The Returned Man, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Self-Sacrifice, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 16:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19176787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: In the mines, one of the Kinkle brothers dies. Tommy wishes it were the right one.





	there's nothing in this world i wouldn't do

**Author's Note:**

> Work title taken from the lyrics of Avicii's ['Hey Brother'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cp6mKbRTQY).

Tommy doesn’t get scared easy, but he does get scared.

He can remember every time, pretty much - he remembers being four years old, and holding his baby brother for the first time. He remembers his mommy telling him he had to look after him, because she wasn’t going to be able to. He remembers his dad after the funeral, the countless broken glass bottles he threw at the walls as Harvey cried endlessly in the travel cot Tommy had dragged into his room. He remembers the first day of school, of watching Harvey’s tiny figure shrinking in the distance as the bus pulled him away, remembers sprinting all the way home to find him in one piece, their dad gone to the mines or the bar or god knows where for almost the entire day. Harvey had been messy, and hungry, but he hadn’t been hurt, and Tommy remembers the crushing relief intimately. 

When Harvey’s finally old enough to go to school himself, Tommy misses his own orientation to walk his brother right to the door of the classroom. He cuts the crusts off his sandwiches and doesn’t cry where anyone can see. In later years, their father will say he spoils Harvey, that it’s his fault his brother’s soft; Tommy doesn’t give a shit what their father says, hasn’t since he found a way to drown his griefs in a bottle. He cuts the crusts off Harvey’s sandwiches every morning, and he’s never fucking stopping. Tommy prefers his brother soft, if it’s soft or cruel, soft or hurt, soft or broken.

One of the worst days of his life was when Harvey got lost in the mines. It had taken him far too long to even realise that his brother wasn’t just hiding anymore, and even longer to convince the foreman to take him in to search. Six long hours later, he found him, curled up and crying in the darkness, and he didn’t speak for days. Tommy doesn’t know what happened down there, what made Harvey shake at every mention of the mines afterwards, but he knows he’ll never forgive himself for it. 

Their dad calls Harvey a chicken shit. He doesn’t see that Tommy is the one who’s really scared, just because he’s not scared for himself. Their dad can’t recognise it, Tommy thinks, can’t understand it - it’s not in his nature to think of someone else before himself, not even his kids. Tommy loathes him; Tommy pities him. When the letter from Notre-Dame comes, Tommy wants to go, but he also knew as he sent off the application that he wouldn’t. Still, he keeps the letter, but makes sure Harvey will never see it. His brother would blame himself, when it’s Tommy’s choice. 

Tommy’s choice will always be Harvey. No matter what, it’s something Tommy knows in his bones. If it's between him or Harvey, it’s not even a choice at all. 

It happens so fast, down in the mines. The walls begin to rumble, and Tommy freezes, his eyes looking around frantically for Harvey. He can’t see him. He can’t see him. Procedure is to stick together, is to call for help and sit tight, but Tommy’s already moving deeper, even as the dirt-shod walls falter. “Harvey!” He screams, and behind him he hears his crew shouting, cursing, praying,  _ “HARVEY!” _

It happens so fast. A great crash that sends him to his knees. A sudden silence from his guys, from everything but the ground.  _ “HARVEY!”  _ He shouts as loud as he can, but can only hear his own voice. By some miracle, he’s not been crushed, a small meter square around him untouched by the collapse. 

Tommy doesn’t care about miracles, or at least not one that spares him and not his brother. He can’t even think where he last saw him, where he might be, if he’s hurt or-

The thought is too painful to complete. It’s like a knife in the heart, and sends him wild, sends him mad. He screams his throat raw, claws at the walls of his earthy prison with his bare hands, only one thought going round and round in his mind:  _ Harvey, Harvey, Harvey.  _

He doesn’t know how long he’s down there, in the end. The dark plays strange tricks on you. But when they find him, he knows it’s because they hear him screaming. When they carry him out, he’s lost his voice and there’s blood and dirt behind his torn fingernails. 

All they find of Harvey is his helmet. Something in Tommy curls up and dies, right then and there.

* * *

They try to keep him home when the search is still going on. He won’t let them. Dad tries to say he’s organising a funeral, and Tommy breaks his nose, because how dare he, how dare he, how  _ dare  _ he. The doctor wants him to rest, but Tommy doesn’t need rest. He’ll sleep when he’s found Harvey. (He’ll sleep when he’s dead.) He’ll sleep when he’s safe, and not before. (He’ll sleep when he’s  _ dead _ .) Dad tells him that he’s acting crazy, and Tommy doesn’t  _ care.  _

He can’t even look at Harvey’s girlfriend, with her wet cheeks and blonde curls.  _ Sabrina,  _ he knows her name from the way Harvey talked -  _ talks,  _ damn it - about her, about how wonderful and beautiful and amazing she is. Tommy’s first girlfriend had been Emma Barnes, and they’d been together for about a week and a half - Harvey loves so deeply, and so strongly, and Tommy can’t look at the girl without feeling like he’s failing him all over again. First loves, he thinks, and his mind only circles back to baby Harvey saying  _ ‘Omee. _

The search ends two days after the collapse; Tommy is officially the only survivor. Tommy doesn’t care for either of those things, because if Harvey is- if Harvey is dead, then the only thing Tommy wants to do is lie down and die too. So he carries on, even when the news trucks disappear and the emergency services pull back and the families of his crew leave, crying. 

His dad left first. He went to a lawyer, for the insurance money. Tommy would kill him if he had the energy to spare. 

The Spellmans don’t go, though. Sabrina sleeps in his truck at night, curled up in Harvey’s hoodie, and her aunts bring him food even when the girl has to go to school - soups and teas that make him feel more like a survivor and less like a half-dead thing that wasn’t buried right. The British one -  _ call me Hilda, poppet _ \- asks him about Harvey on the third day, and then Tommy’s just  _ losing  _ it, sobbing his heart out until he runs out of tears. “He deserved better,” he cries to her, this kind stranger who strokes his hair, “he deserved  _ better  _ than me. It should’ve been me, it should’ve been me-”

She says  _ no, no,  _ tells him pretty lies about Harvey being in a better place, being somewhere beautiful, about him being the best brother Harvey could have had - Tommy would ask her how she knows what to say, but then he remembers she works at a mortuary. She’s probably got comforting a dead man’s family down to a fine art. 

Because that’s what he is, isn’t he? That’s what they are. Harvey is dead - his heart tears, his blood goes cold, his mind screams out against it - and Tommy is his family. Tommy is the only family Harvey ever really had, and Harvey was the only family Tommy had (because that man, he thinks of his father, of the way he didn’t even cry for his own son, that man is  _ not  _ his family) and he’s gone. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone. 

Hilda is still rubbing his back when he hears a  _ thump  _ from the mine entrance. His head snaps up, vision blurry, half-expecting it to be a coyote or fox. Half-hopeful, even after all hope is gone. 

And yet, there he is. 

Tommy remembers little of the hours following that moment. He remembers intimately the black soot and earth caked over Harvey’s whole body, and the way that little curl in his hair is still springing up all the same. He remembers Harvey’s warm body, his hot cheeks, his thumping heart, his stiff limbs. They’re back at home, and Tommy doesn’t know how they got there, just knows that he’s never letting Harvey out of his sight again. 

Harvey looks like a soldier, with his thousand yard stare, his set expression. Tommy doesn’t hold it against him, strips him down to his boxers and sponges the dirt that should have been his grave off Harvey’s skin. There’s voices in the kitchen, low and mean, but Tommy feels like a foreigner in their scummy bathroom, like he’s on an island where Harvey is alive and nothing, nothing, nothing else matters. 

It takes him forever to fall asleep. As a baby, Harvey would need a bedtime story and a lullaby and the door open a handspan wide because he was scared of the dark. (He was scared of the dark, Tommy thinks hopelessly, he was scared of the dark and I left him down there.) He keeps trying to sit up, and Tommy only gets him to lie down when he lays beside him. Like a mimic, Harvey tracks his movement, follows his hand as Tommy strokes his hair reverently. He hums something half forgotten, four notes on repeat, and finally, finally Harvey’s eyes close. 

The next morning, the doctor comes, and Tommy answers every question he has. Harvey answers none, just sitting, just staring. “Shock,” the doctor decrees, pity in his eyes, “it’ll pass.”

A knock on the door. Tommy doesn’t take his eyes off Harvey’s straight-backed form as he goes to answer it. It’s Sabrina, and her aunts, the girl looking upset and the older women severe. It’s been a hard couple of days; Tommy understands. He’d usually make pleasantries, but he’s not sure he could if he tried, and there’s a helplessness in Sabrina’s expressive eyes that makes him crack the door open wider. “He’s in the lounge,” he says, and leads them there. 

Harvey blinks as they come in, but shows no other sign of acknowledgement. Tommy surrenders his seat next to him to Sabrina with ill-grace, even though he knows that she must be feeling like he was before. It can’t hurt, he tells himself as she takes his hand in hers, it can’t hurt.

“Hey, Harvey,” Sabrina says, her voice breaking on the second syllable of his name. She blinks fast at the lack of recognition, the lack of anything, on his face. “It’s… it’s me. It’s Brina.”

Nothing. 

“The doctor says he’s in shock,” Tommy says as she exchanges a look layered with heavy meaning with her aunts, “he’ll be back to himself soon enough.”

“Shock?” She perks up a little, as if it’s the best news she’s heard all day. “That’s all? That’s normal, though, right?”

“Thomas,” Not-Hilda says, her voice steeped in clipped concern and something else Tommy can’t identify, “we’ve brought cookies, they’re Harvey’s favourites. Would he like some now?”

Tommy opens his mouth, and closes it again. “He- he hasn’t got much of an appetite right now, Ms Spellman.” It sounds weak to his own ears, and Not-Hilda’s mouth disappears into a line of disapproval. 

“He hasn’t eaten?” She clarifies, and Tommy shakes his head slowly, missing the look exchanged between the three women at the confirmation. “Well, I hope he… gets better soon. We’ll take our leave - Sabrina?”

The girl has been whispering something to Harvey, over and over, too low to hear - Tommy wants to tell her not to waste her breath, but the words get stuck in his throat. He’s been talking to Harvey constantly, after all. “Aunt Zee,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks, “Aunt Zee,  _ please-” _

“It’s time, love.” Hilda replies with a sad smile, and the teenager sniffles as her guardian raises her to her feet. “Thank you, Tommy, for your hospitality.” A little lost, and a lot relieved, Tommy sees them out. 

It's only later that he realizes they left the cookies behind.

* * *

He doesn’t know the man knocking on the door. He’s on edge, something in the air making his cells vibrate with warning, and he answers with a shotgun. 

“You’re him,” the man - boy, really, he can’t be any older than Harvey - says, like they’ve met before. “You’re Tommy Kinkle?” 

“Yeah,” Tommy says, his finger flickering over the safety and aching to turn it off. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but he knows there is something  _ off  _ about this kid, something beyond his too-symmetrical face and strange introduction. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but he does, and it’s sitting stiff as a board in the living room. “Who’s asking?”

“Nick Scratch,” the boy says, lowering his head in an honest to God bow. “I’m here to warn you.”

Something crawls up the back of Tommy’s throat. “About?” 

“Your brother.”

Tommy flicks the safety off, and for the first time there’s a flash of concern in the boy’s eyes, as if he hasn’t had a gun pointed at his chest for the entire conversation. “Harvey’s in shock,” he grinds out, knowing it’s a lie as soon as he says it. “And you’re not one of his friends.”

“Maybe not,” Nick Scratch says, swallowing, before meeting Tommy dead in the eyes although he’s clearly itching to keep a watch on the barrel aimed at his torso, “but I’m trying to save his life.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Tommy turns the safety back on. “Talk fast.”

* * *

Harvey will go anywhere Tommy leads, just so long as he holds his hand, and he does nothing but blink as Tommy guides him towards the woods. It’s painfully reminiscent of their childhood, of cut off crusts and tickle fights, but right now everything is painful.

“He’s not dead,” Tommy says for what feels like the thousandth time, the pulse under his thumb a soothing reminder of that fact. 

“But he was,” Nick says, “and that’s the problem. Coming back, part of him got- stuck. The ritual only half-worked. So now your brother’s body is walking around without your brother inside.”

Tommy wants to deny it. More than anything, he wants to deny it. But Nick’s showed him spells, made the leaves off the trees dance and lit a blue flame in his palm, and it fits. It fits, it fits. “Sabrina did this?” He says instead of acknowledging Nick’s words. “Harvey’s girlfriend?”

“She did,” Nick confirms, “and so did I.”

Tommy freezes for a split second, before he starts walking again. “Why? You don’t even know Harvey.”

“Because she asked me to,” Nick answers easily, like this- this crush of his isn’t interfering with life and death, with the most important thing in Tommy’s life. “Because it was witches who caused the mine to collapse in the first place.”

Tommy wishes he had anything more to offer than exhaustion. He should be enraged - that collapse killed his friends, killed his guys, killed his  _ brother.  _ He wants to ask  _ why,  _ and simultaneously doesn’t ever want to know. He wants to ask why they didn’t bring back the others too, Ted and Joe and Hank and Brad, why it was only Harvey, and he doesn’t want hear the answer. He doesn’t want to change their minds. 

“You love her?” 

Tommy doesn’t mean to say it, but Nick barely reacts, a frisson of pain so slight breaking across his face for a split second. “I could.”

“And she loves him?”

Nick nods curtly, looking at Harvey - at Harvey’s body, at Harvey’s corpse, at Tommy’s little brother - with curious eyes. “Very much.”

“Good.” Tommy says. “Good.”

* * *

 

The clearing in which the first resurrection occurred is unexceptional, save for the dark red stains on a patch of dirt and Harvey’s clothes in a puddled in the middle of it. Sabrina is already there, her eyes puffy and raw and red, and she only half manages to stifle the wounded cry that tears its way out of her throat when she sees Harvey walking hand-in-hand with Tommy. 

Her aunts aren’t there. There’s only one other girl waiting for them, her features as exquisite as a stained glass window, and her eyes blacker than the night sky. She thins her lips when she sees him looking at her, but he isn’t the one to look away first. 

“Tommy,” Sabrina steps forward, her voice breaking a little, and he thinks none of them miss how she doesn’t address the silent figure at his side, “thank you. For coming.”

“It’s for Harvey,” Tommy says tightly, “how could I not?”

Silence reigns, before the other girl steps forward, her white hair catching the light. “Your brother can’t stay like this, Kinkle.” Tommy wonders how she knows his name, “Even if it was possible to live without a soul, he’ll waste away without food and water before long. We can make it painless.” 

Tommy is standing between her and Harvey before she’s finished speaking. “Prudence!” Sabrina exclaims at the same time, upset and bewildered. 

“It’s only fair he knows all the options,” Prudence continues, before she sighs, looking at the way Tommy has gathered Harvey behind him, despite knowing he’s unarmed and outmatched in every way. 

“You’re not killing him,” he hisses, “You’re not killing him. Not again.”

Beside him, Nick looks sheepish, and Tommy wonders if he was meant to tell him as much as he did, but says nothing.

“I think-” Sabrina says, after Prudence doesn’t say anything in response, “No, I know how to fix this. It didn’t work before because we brought the first sacrifice back to life- it wasn’t a fair trade. If someone… if someone dies in Harvey’s place, dies permanently, then- then it should work. He should come back for good. The debt will be paid.”

“Only death can pay for life,” Nick confirms, and Tommy believes him. 

He looks at Harvey. He looks at Harvey, his only true family, the little boy who has always been more his son than his brother. He doesn’t know who he is without him. He doesn’t want to know. 

“I’ll do it,” he says, quietly, looking at that stubborn curl again, the pink end of his nose and reddish tips of his ears, the blank, honey-nutmeg-chocolate eyes that are all Tommy remembers of his mother’s face. And then, louder, so it’s a promise, so he’ll be held to it: “I’ll do it.”

* * *

“Harvey wouldn’t want this.” Sabrina tells him, her face a study in misery and contradiction.

“Harvey’s not here,” Tommy reminds her, and doesn’t have to say: _ whose fault is that?  _

She knows. They both do.

* * *

They want him to think on it. They want him to change his mind. 

He won’t. 

So he wraps his arms around his brother's body once more, grips tight in the hope that something of the embrace will still be with him when he comes back. He kisses his forehead, harder to do than ever now that Harvey’s a touch taller than him, but he manages. He cries, because he doesn’t want to die, but he carries on because more than anything he wants Harvey to live. 

He kneels down in the dirt, and closes his eyes as the ritual commences. 

Tommy doesn’t even feel the knife, not really. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
